Friday, April 24, 2009

Fuzzy Logic and the "Brazilian Way"

Fuzzy is all about uncertainty. There is a common "street-smart" expression that I could not forget to mention here. Because Brazilians are, by nature, very flexible regarding their rules. We have an expression that people use every time that they are on the middle of "adapting" our rules to our needs :-). We say that there is always the "Jeitinho brasileiro" (Brazilian way... it is said in a kind and fun manner :-) ).

Anyway, I got back to this expression because it has everything to do with the Fuzzy Logic. I'd say that Fuzzy logic is the "Jeitinho Brasileiro" for logical expressions.

For Example:

One could say : "I like that girl, she is 1.62 meters tall, 56.5 kilos, her eyes are 78% black".

This would be the traditional mathematical/straight way of saying it. It is a precise description that lets no doubts. Any normal person would hear that and laugh because only a complete geek would describe a girl like that.

With Fuzzy logic, the description would be more like: "I like that girl, she is about one and a half meters tall, a little more than 50 Kilos, her eyes are light gray".

As it might be noticed, the fuzzy description is a lot more human friendly than the first one. Humans are imprecise by nature. Fuzzy logic fits on situations that precision is not required or when it is impossible to have it.

I could go forward and explain the Fuzzy Sets but today is Friday night and I'm not desperate to keep updating the blog. I may get back to this subject next week :-)